Author, engineer, inventor, and all around bad a&* woman, Sarah Guppy nee Beach seemed to have a fevered imagination for solving a menagerie of problems. She patented a device to prevent boat hull barnacles and scored a British Navy contract of 40,00 GBP. She suggested railway embankments be planted with willow and poplar trees to prevent soil erosion. Sarah designed an exercise bed. A candle holder to keep candles burning longer. A caulking method for wooden boats. And she created a tea urn where you could also steam an egg and simultaneously keep your toast warm.
But what she is most famous for is designing a safe suspension bridge foundation, which she patented in 1811.
Born to a wealthy trading family in Birmingham, Sarah married Bristol trader Samuel Guppy. The two had six children and became the toast of Bristol Society. With their collective imaginations, they helped launch the Great Western Railway and the Great Western steamship.
In her late 60s, after the death of Samuel, Sarah married Richard Eyre Coote who was in his late thirties and loved to gamble and carouse. He quickly spent the majority of Sarah’s largesse. Which proves even the brilliant can sometimes be tripped up by the heart.
Sarah also wrote several books for children, founded a girls charity school, and advocated for an assortment of vulnerable populations including widows, female servants, and retired seaman. Sarah never stopped working, inventing, and caring for things she believed in. Definitely a Regency woman of character.
Retrospect of philosophical, mechanical, chemical and agricultural discoveries, 1812
The New Monthly Magazine, 1832
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2016/jun/08/revealing-lives-women-science-technology-history-sarah-guppy
Wow! Enterprising woman!